The Lawrences

Goodbye Carpet Hello Hardwood!

Many of you may know that I hate carpet. Really! It collects so much dirt and hides it and you only find it when you go to replace it or remove it. So it was a glorious day for me when I came home one late summer day to find Steven ripping up the carpet in the living room! Of course that prompted us to rip it out in the front bedroom(our altar room) and in the kids room! The best part is we have hardwood everywhere! I am so excited. We should have enough money by February to refinish all the floors. Some of the base boards were raised to put in the carpet before we owned the house so we will have to put new one's in. That should be an adventure trying to match it to the existing moldings! So with out further adieu I present the before and middle pictures. I'll post afters once we have the floors refinished in February!

Long time no blog!

Hey there! Well it has been quite a while since my last blog so lots has gone on. I thought I would catch everyone up with how our summer played out. It consisted of lots of gardening and yard projects. We had a successful first garden and produced a lot of cabbage, zucchini squash, hot peppers, strawberries and tomatoes. Our broccoli didn't do well and neither did the watermelons. We look forward to planting more variety this spring. So once February rolls around the starts will begin indoors! YAY! Here are some of our garden high lights!

We did some traveling as well as some camping. One of the neatest things is we purchased was a camper. It came in handy on our trip to Utah and not having to pay for a hotel. Here are a few shots from some of our trips.

Now we have put the garden to bed and are finishing up the Soccer season! We're very excited that Fall is here!

Look Ma no training wheels!

So Ashton has mastered his bike. Yes Sir! No more training wheels for him! He is so excited! Here is a short video I took the day he got it. It only took him a few hours to figure it out once Dad took off the training wheels. You can see how excited he is. Way to go Ashton!

A Ton o' Fun!

Yep literally a ton of flag stone has been placed in my back yard, by my trusty contractor, ME! Talk about a ton o' something! As you can see from my face I am quite happy about being finished. It has been three straight weekends of back breaking labor, but I think the result was worth all the effort. I have to give a BIG thank you to my husband Steven for moving all the rock to the back yard, hauling sand and gravel here and there and for basically putting up with all my bossing! Believe me he tried to take a shot at laying flag, but gladly gave the reins back to me. So with my creative juices on high this is how it unfolded. Enjoy!

After excavating the area we spread the gravel.

Here is the full gravel layer. Now for weed barrier and sand.

Let the creativity begin! Here I am laying the flag and trying not to mess anything up. Basically I can put together a 400 SF puzzle with out a picture! Ha Ha Ha!

If you saw my back yard before you know what a waste land it was, if not I will throw in a few pictures to show you!

Here is a shot of the back yard before Idaho power downed the two trees in the corner, killing everything in the yard! Ugh! They were awful trees though. I don't recommend Locusts at all!

Here is the waste land that it was before we started the patio. You can even see a pile of flag stone that we started collecting last year. I am taking a load of hand split wood to the front of the house.

Drum roll please....here is the after! We still have to fill in the cracks with soil and plant our Scottish moss, but the hard part of this project is behind us!

Can you believe it is the same yard? I can't! Now on to planting, staining the fence, and so on.
Look Steven already got started after getting some advice from Bailey of course!

Lawrence Family how does your Garden Grow?

With lots of help! My boys and I have been living and breathing the garden! For the last three weekends in a row and some week nights when we aren't at baseball games/practices we are in the garden. We have amazed our selves with how much we have been able to get done and I think we are in the home stretch. Sorry to everyone for not getting more blogging done, but when gardening you only have so much time to get everything prepared for all the wonderful little plants that will soon fill its boarders.

Steven watering the strawberrys after weeding them. They look amazing!

Cleaning up the path way until we start the next section.

Our garden beds are about 50 feet long each and both are over 4 feet wide, so we'll be growing a lot of food! Wish us luck!

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Last night Ashton had his first t-ball practice with his team the Angels. He had lots of fun even though he was starting to get a cold. Coach Greg did a really great job of keeping the kids attention for the 45 minute practice while we all battled the very cold chill in the air. The parents got to practice the drills with their children which is one of the reasons Steven was looking forward to t-ball. Here are the hightlights...

Stretching & Warming Up

Drills

Here is a short clip of Ashton and Daddy doing some the drill work.

We are all looking forward to Thad and Ashton's first games which should be in the coming weeks! Let's play ball!

Green thumbs!

I've been dreaming of a garden since we bought our house last year and now I'm planting seeds! Here is my garden space on the side of our house. I hope to have it full of wonderful things to eat through out this season!